On doing Remembrance well (Sermon)
It’s been a while… But this weekend I preached my first sermon on Remembrance Sunday. I feel quite grateful that I’m not currently in a church with massive civic responsibilities, as that offered a little bit of an easier space in which to navigate some of the complexities I feel around Remembrance in the UK at present. I’m also really glad that my supervisor reads and gives feedback on my sermons in advance, because it was definitely a week where I wanted a second pair of eyes on it, to help me make sure I was trying to find the balance I wanted.
My readings were Malachi 4.1-2a and Luke 21.5-19
I.
One of the last museums I went to was in a small town called Franschhoek, in South Africa. Without getting into too much detail, Franschhoek is where a large group of French Huguenot refugees settled in the 1600s when they arrived in South Africa. They were allocated the land by existing colonists, they planted vines, and now it’s a beautiful town surrounded by wine farms, and there’s a museum that tells the story of this group of settlers and the history of the town. It’s nicely laid out and asks its visitors to think about these Huguenots as religious refugees, to learn about how they rebuilt their lives in this place, and about their ongoing legacy (in which wine is an important feature!). And I found it incredibly awkward, because the exhibition mostly avoided talking about the people who lived in Franschhoek before the Huguenots arrived – before it was Franschhoek; and it avoided talking about how easily these French protestant refugees fitted in with the Dutch colonists who were already living in the Cape, and how they became a part of the colonial hierarchy. This is not a part of the story that the museum is particularly keen for you to remember. It is, perhaps, a part of the story that the Huguenots’ descendants wish could be forgotten.
II.
Now, why on earth am I talking about the past when today’s gospel reading is talking about the future?
Jesus is standing in the temple, talking about its future—and telling his audience that one day the temple will be torn down. And when they ask him when this will happen, he uses apocalyptic imagery, letting them know that he is talking about the end of all things, when the Lord will come to judge and to save. It is the same day as one that the prophet Malachi is talking about, that the Psalmist is singing about.
Often, when we talk about the second coming, we focus on the final revelation of the Kingdom and of God’s love, and we look forward to it as a good thing, an end to the brokenness of the world and a time of joy. Which it is. But we do also need to remember that this ending involves the bringing of justice, and that doesn’t always feel like good news to the powerful.[1] In this part of his gospel Luke shows how Jesus’ teaching challenges the teaching of the powerful and the wise but is still treasured by the mass of the people. And as Jesus describes the persecution his followers will face before his return, Luke is describing something that the earliest Christians have already been experiencing. They have been being persecuted. The temple has already been destroyed at the time that the gospel is being written. The promise of justice is good news for them—but not so much for those who have been oppressing them.
And so, I want us to take a moment to think about what it might mean to ‘do remembrance’ well in the light of this future: the coming of God’s Kingdom, of love—and of justice. Where does the promise of this future bring us hope, and where does it challenge us?
III.
Remembrance Sunday can be a difficult day for people for many different reasons. Some of us will be remembering those we have loved who have died or been injured in wars or in terror attacks. Some of us will be remembering people and places we love that continue to suffer because of wars. And some of us will be remembering people and events that are sometimes avoided or left out in the usual, official, stories told during Remembrance, because we, as a country, might prefer to forget them.
Those who fought for us because their homes were colonised by the British Empire—and are now listed as ‘Commonwealth troops.’
Those people who came to Britain from those colonies after having fought for us, only be told they didn’t belong here.
Those who fought and died for ‘the wrong side’—be they German, Argentinian, Kenyan, or Irish…
Those who fought because our leaders told them they must.
Those who were imprisoned as conscientious objectors.
Those who fought and continue to have to fight because being in the army is a good job.
Those who fought in wars whose motives were mixed. In wars we’re embarrassed or ashamed of.
Those who lost their lives for a world we seem to be squandering.
We may be feeling that all of these people and the details of their lives are forgotten, and that this forgetting is an injustice.
Because the shadow side of remembering is forgetting. As we tell stories: in words, in symbols and rituals, we are choosing to remember things and to value them, and we are choosing to forget things. This is how museums and exhibitions—like the Huguenot museum—present subjects to us: they make these choices, and they tell us a story. The human process of remembering and forgetting is generally less conscious than this—but this is essentially what is going on as we do remembrance.
Sometimes forgetting is healthy: we cannot remember everything, and it would not always be good for us to do so. And God, as he forgives us, puts the memory of our wrongdoings to one side. But at other times it is not healthy to forget, or to try to forget things. Things that still have an impact on our lives, as individuals and communities; people we should perhaps value more than we do. And even as God loves and forgives us, he calls us to participate in Jesus’ work of justice and reconciliation, anticipating the coming of the kingdom. And in remembrance, that involves remembering well. Remembering honestly.
And so, my visit to the Huguenot museum and the story it told me, the things it wanted me to remember and to forget, bothers me. Because South Africa is still a place where there is massive inequality and division, and for me, as someone whose family is entangled in this past, to forget this part of the story is to risk doing injustice to those God loves and to whom he promises justice. It is dangerous.
And while so much of what Remembrance Sunday gives us can be valuable, there are also things that it forgets, people and parts of our past that it would rather we not think about, in a way that risks injustice. And this should bother us, given the current tensions and divisions in our society that are linked to the ways we remember—and forget—our complicated part in global history, including our wars. To remember well requires us to remember honestly, and to be willing to question narratives that are promoted and defended. On Remembrance Sunday, to remember our debts to so many others, and to acknowledge when we have forgotten them is to value and love them. To forget this is to risk doing injustice.
IV.
Today’s readings encourage us to do remembrance in the light of our expectation of Christ’s return, as we move towards the end of the liturgical calendar. We are called to remember God’s love and salvation and God’s justice, and to remember in ways that imitate that love and justice.
We can remember those who have died in the light of the resurrection and promise of eternal life. And we can trust that God remembers, with us, those who we may feel have been forgotten. But we are also called to tell, to hear, and to remember the stories we would rather forget, in the knowledge that God’s justice honours them. Because only with an honest remembering of the messiness and complexities of our past, and the acknowledgement of different experiences of it, can we pursue the kind of reconciliation that anticipates God’s kingdom.
Remembering is something we do regularly here—every time we celebrate the Eucharist. We tell a story, remembering Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—and we do this in anticipation of his coming in glory. One of the most beautiful things about this act of remembrance is that in remembering the broken and the resurrected Christ, we are always remembering both human failure—the betrayal that led to the cross—and God’s loving forgiveness. This remembrance allows us to face the challenge to remember well and justly in turn. Because it is hard to look at our collective past honestly and to seek restoration. It is often so much easier to forget.
May the knowledge of the love and forgiveness of God continue to encourage us to remember well, in expectation of Christ’s return. Amen.
[1] González, J. L. (2010). Luke: Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, Westminster John Knox Press.